A Child-Approved Joke Book for Ages 6 and Up That You Can Get at CVS

It is a late Friday afternoon in July. A critic named Jan (her real name) is sitting at a table in the café of a good suburban public library.

Jan has placed two books in front of her on the table. One is Lyle, Lyle Crocodile (Houghton Mifflin, 1962), a handsome, award-winning hardcover book that she has checked out of the library. The other is Awesome Good Clean Jokes for Kids (Harvest House, 1992), a cheap mass-market paperback that she has just picked up at CVS.

She is trying to decide which book to review and is leaning toward Lyle, because she didn’t get it off a rack that also had books about iffy herbal remedies and end-of-the-world prophecies.

An 11-year-old girl named Olivia (not her real name) starts to walk by. She does not know Jan but stops instantly when she sees Awesome Good Clean Jokes for Kids.

OLIVIA: I love that book! There’s a really good joke on page 103. It’s in the “knock, knock” section.JAN: Would you show it to me? (She opens the book to page 103.) OLIVIA: There it is at the bottom of the page. JAN: “Knock, knock. / Who’s there? / Noah. / Noah who? / Noah good place we can go for dinner?”OLIVIA: That’s my favorite. I like another one on that page, too. The one about the turnip. JAN: “Knock, knock. / Who’s there? / Turnip. / Turnip who? / Turnip the heat, it’s cold in here!”OLIVIA: I like that one because I really like turnips. JAN: Do you think other 11-year-olds would like this book? Or do you think it would be better for another age?OLIVIA: I think some 11-year-olds would like it. But I think it’s best for about 6-year-olds. My brother is six, and it’s his favorite book. We had a copy of it already, but my mother had to go to CVS and buy him his personal copy. JAN: Why do you think your brother likes it so much? OLIVIA: He like all those silly things like Captain Underpants.

Bob Phillips’s Awesome Good Clean Jokes for Kids (Harvest House, 207 pp., $4.99, paperback) also has riddles, daffy definitions, and many other kinds of jokes for ages 6 and up. It is available at drug- and other stores, including online and retail booksellers.

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We sure do. What really got me was that this girl had memorized the page number of her favorite joke. Afterward, I started thinking: Could I tell a stranger the page number of my favorite part of any book I love?

Your anecdote, the setting, and Miss Olivia herself are as good reading as the joke book that Olivia touts. Excellent. And I’m off to the bookstore today with a list of several of your recommendations in hand. And yes (from many many blogs ago) I have Cry the Beloved Country to read now, waiting, and will report in on it when finished.